I am thinking of upgrading my DSL Broadband speed from the basic to the next level. My question is how much difference in performance will there be? What am to expect that will improve? What are the pros and cons on a faster broadband speed? Is broadband speed relative to modem speed?

Looking forward to your responses.Thanks

A:Broadband Speed Vs Modem Speed

Broadband is normally MUCH faster than a dial-up modem. However, I think from your post that you already have broadband but want to upgrade to a more expense package. The difference in speed will be totally dependent on your internet service provider and what type of packages they offer.

My ISP is BT & I am on the "Up To 8 Meg" package. When I use various Speed Test sites, they all show roughly the same figure of about 950 kbps for Downstream. However, when I complain to BT about this speed, they tell me to use their site: http://www.speedtester.bt.com/ & the results from the tests there confuse me.

Below are the last results I achieved & the Downstream figure is quite respectable!

I have kept screen-grabs of previous tests & the IP profile for my line, (whatever that is... BT cannot give me a straight answer!), has varied such as, 1000, 1500, 2000 & 2500. There was one time when my line profile was 3500 kbps which resulted in 448 kbps Upstrem, 4224 kbps Downstream & an actual throughput of 3240 kbps.

When I use BT's site to see "How Fast Can I Go", I have had different figures on different days - anything between 3Mb & 4.5Mb

I find it hard to argue with BT's Tech Support when referring to the results from their site as they show a reasonable Downstream figure. My question is, why do all the other test sites I use show a figure of about 950 kbps for Downstream when BT's site shows a figure about double all these others?

i have just upgraded my broadband to 20mg from 4mg and it does not seem to make any difference when i go in to network connections and it says 100.00 mbps this has not changed when i upgraged does this change when you have a faster connection is there a way of checking how fast my b/band connection is as my provider is telling me i am getting 20mg any help would be cool

A:broadband speed ??????

that 100 mbps is how fast you can transfer files from your pc to another pc on a network, not your internet speed. it will not change from upgrading internet services. you can test your internet speed by going to http://reviews.cnet.com/7004-7254_7-0.html and running there test. there are also other sites that will test your connection too. hope this helps

hi, i was checking my broadband speed today and found the virgin speed checker,i entered my post code and it came up that i can get 5mb download but when i tried again i enterd my phone number and it came up that i could only get 3mb download is there a reason for this,any help thanks in advance

hi everyoneyou have all helped me with my dropping out problem i am now going to ask if youcan help with my slow broadband speed 736kbps.my isp provider has been very helpful but they tell me i am not going to get a faster speed because i live to far from my exchange i.e. 5miles.I am using a wireless router with windows vista 32bit on a laptop.any help to speed me up would be very much appreciated

regards calmat

A:broadband speed

Hi,

Look here it might give you an insight into how your speed is set by the ISP & local exchange (Distance).

What is my broadband 'IP profile' and why is it important? | Help | BT.com Help

Hi,Anyone here in the UK using EE broadband.
I'm in South Wales UK and over the last few weeks my speed has dropped from 16.60Mbps down to 12.20Mbps,have informed EE but with no luck yet.
Just wondering is there anybody having same issue as me.
many Thanks.

A:EE Broadband speed

Ookla says I'm getting 19.63, so no complaints on an "up to 20" package.

I have recently upgraded from dial up to broadband. I had just downloaded some software and it took a few minutes to download,15 mg. The speed it was downloading was 50 kbps. My broadband speed is supposed to be 256/512 upload/download! Why is it still downloading as if it is dialup. I do not dialup and the broadband is connected! XP, 3.2 ghtz, 160 gig, 512 ram,

A:Broadband speed

It could be the server you were using is just real busy. Try a free online speed test. http://reviews.cnet.com/Bandwidth_meter/7004-7254_7-0.html

i would like to test my internet speed in mbps,last week i test my internet speed here IP Details.com : Internet Speed test , it shown in kbps i need the right website to test in mbps,please let me know if there is anything.

I am recently connected to broad band and the connecting speed now shows 100Mbps.I have a 256mb ram and 1.2ghs amd duron processor. While downloading a file I get a initial speed of 40-45mbps speed. I am glad if any one enlighten me whether this speed is normal or anything to be done to increase the speed. Thank you Regards,Mohan

How can I tell if my 1mb cable broadband is running at the right speed? I have gone onto different sites to get a speed check but I don't really understand the results. My oS is Windows XP Pro and my ISP is ntl. All I want to know is if it is running at the speed it is supposed to run at. I've just had an upgrade but it doesn't seem that much faster than the 300kbps I had before. Can someone please tell me how I can find out in language I can understand. The first test I did was at ADSL and the results were: Downstream actual speed 148 Kbps, Upstream Actual speed 28 Kbps. The second site was bandwidthplace.com and the results were: 532.5 kilobits per second. The third site was numion.com, which said Throughput 5580 Bps and Throughput 45 kbps. The last one was dslreports.com which gave me download speed of 951 kbps and upload speed of 42 kbps. I don't understand any of this. Please can someone help. Thanks in advance.

I am an unsophisticated user. I have some questions regarding broadband speed. I have AT&T DSL Elite Internet. I found a link to an FCC site wherein you can test your broad band speed (link: http://www.broadband.gov/). The results I got were as follows:

I made the original post above, 2 days ago. More than a little ironically, today I received a letter from AT&T, dated the same day (March 4) that states, "As part of our ongoing effort to provide you with the best possible internest exprerience, we regularly conduct quality checks to test the speed of your AT&T High Speed Internet service at your modem. Our tests indicate that you are experiencing throughput speeds slower than the speed tier associated with your service plan."

As a result, they are lowering my monthly price. This raises 2 questions:

1) Is there any chance that AT&T monitors this website and is taking the above action as a result?2) What is throughput speed? Is that the speed going into my modem from AT&T, or the speed that is going into my computer from the modem? If the former, does that mean that no matter what plan I choose, with whatever modem, the internet speed I currently have is all I'll ever have with AT&T?

I have O2 Broadband premium with the O2 wireless box II on up to 20 meg. I would only ever get 2-4mb so I called them up and they said it was because I was using an telephone extension cable from the master socket in the livingroom up to my room and to change it to a broadband extension cable.

So I bought a RJ11 cable and I have done a few speed tests using various sites and show higher speeds from around 7mb to 12mb (depending when I test them) but whenever I download something it always downloads at the same speed around 150kbs to 250kbs? how is this when the speed test sites say I can get up to 12mbs?

I checked my uncles PC (stays across the road) and he is on talk talk and varies from 7mb to 12mb like myself and downloaded the same file from cnet and he was downloading at 1.5mbs - 2mbs where I was only 150kb to 200kb?? both are connected with ethernet cables.

I have tried "OOKLA" www.speedtest.net/ and www.broadbandspeedtest.co.uk and the results are quite different. Ookla gives twice the download speed results compared to the other. Can anyone recommend a speed tester?

A:broadband speed

The way I gauged my download speed was to download something large from GigaNews. After a few minutes any "surge" settles down and you get a steady rate. Tests with small data tend to favor ISPs that give a short burst, boost, or spike. If the download is less than 100 MB or so, it's too short to get past the download spike.

I access broadband from a Wired router, and my two kids, are wireless. I know that when we are all on the speeds will slow down, but even when I am the only one on, it seems slow for broadband. Today, however, the web pages are loading instantly. How can this be? How can I check my broadbands settings/speeds and what they should be, and why they don't always reach the speeds they are doing now?

Morning Guys, Maybe someone has ran across this and can help. I'm looking at a Insight Broad Band home network for a guy. 3 pc's on his router. He is paying for the 20.0 package, supposed to be 20 MB download. 2 of the pc's get about 18MB download, I figure this is about right with the modem (motorola surfboard sb 5100) and a (linksys wrt54g wireless router) all with current firmware. Insight say's everything is provisioned correctly. All pc's are wired with the longest run at about 100 ft. The middle run at 30 ft only get's about 10 MB download with several different speedtest. That pc is running XP Pro and all pc's have the same OS. All pc's are about the same, 2 to 2.5 gig processors. I have ran, hijackthis, spybot, adaware, super anti spyware, malwarebytes, combofix and his virus program along with online scanner Housecall. All came up clean. If not infected anywhere, where should I look for the speed loss. I changed cable ports on the router, changed nic card and cat 5 cable. I am at a loss on this, any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

A:Broadband speed

Hi

You should post this in the networking section here.

1. Are the network settings the same on all 3 computers? Especially DNS. Or are all 3 computers set up using DHCP?
2. Do you have anything else running at the same time as browsing? Especially updating software like antivirus/Adobe/Java/Apple or Quicktime/Windows updates? Try to stop it if you have.
3. Do you have any Firewall software running? You can temporarily disable it and see if it makes a difference.
4. Is the 3rd PC still slow when the other 2 are disconnected?
5. If you ping www.google.com do you get any timeouts?
6. Have you tried to use a different browser like Chrome or Firefox if you are using IE? You can also try resetting your browser or disabling any add-ons
7. Is the network cable of the 3rd PC running next to any power lines, fridges, heaters or anything that can cause electrical interference?
8. If you go into the properties of your network adapter and click on the advanced tab, is "Media Type" set to "auto Select"?

At the end of November/begininning of December I switched to a different broadband package within AOL, changing from AOL Gold to Broadband wireless. The wireless package is up to 8 Meg in speed, but I know that approx 4 Meg is the maximum available to me.

To begin with all was well and I was getting good speeds when web browsing etc, but after two or three weeks the speed suddenly decreased from 3.7 Meg to approx 400kbps. I queried this with technical support (!), and jumped through all the hoops they asked me to, unplugging, replugging, power cycle of the wireless router etc all to no avail. They then decided there was a fault on my line and reported this to BT...BT said the line was fine. A reset of the line by AOL finally brought my speed back up to 3.8 Meg.

After another couple of weeks exactly the same thing happened again. I went through the same hoops with Technical Support, then they decided there was a fault on the line... BT said there wasn't, and this time an engineer was sent out to do some checks at the exchange, then come here. The morning of the engineer's visit my speed was still slow, after his checks at the exchange it went back to approx 3.2 Meg.

That was a week ago. Yesterday my line speed fell dramatically again, to the point that speed tests now show a downstream that averages at about 100kbps. This morning I've done a full power cycle (more in hope than anticipation!) but it has had no effect.I've read where people have had troub... Read more

For a while now, I`ve been suspicious that my BT Infinity 1 (actually states this on my bill) that I signed up for last March 2015, has never achieved the speeds beyond the 15mb. Now speed in itself doesn`t really bother me unless my pages are not loading faster than Brian the snail! That was only the case when I was using the wireless connection but switched that off and now use a long Ethernet cable and have had no drops or lag to complain about (yet).

I have a BT Home Hub 5 wireless dual band router. Nice piece of kit, but drove me a little mad when I was setting it up originally. Now it stays a steady blue light with wireless switched off.

On the BT community pages, customers are sometimes asked to post their router `stats` in order to view what they say and to check the download/upload specs and `ping`....whatever that is?

I log into my HH5 and click on various pages, but al it shows me in terms of speed is the following:

I`ve done unrelated online speed checks and my download speed is always below 2mbps. Not what you might expect from fast fibre broadband, so it seems my BT Infinity 1 fibre is actually (possibly) such on paper, but ADSL in reality? Is there a way I can check this guys? I just want to be sure BT do have me on Infinity (FTTC) fibre to the cabinet but are actually pulling the wool over my eyes! Might give me something to bargain with as my contr... Read more

I have a Dell desktop PC with XP. For years I have closed more often than hot using "Hibernate". Recently, closing in this mode causes my broadband speed to reduce to a snails pace. To maintain normal speed I have to close using "Turn Off". Help!!!

hi there, i thought i would spread the good news, you can get broadband speed out of your existing dialup connection and even increase your broadband connection. It works, check it out at www.whizzconnect.com.

A:Dialup at broadband speed

Dual post.

(Its against the rules.....)

Other post has some comments here http://forums.techguy.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=201756

SpeedTest.net used to be very good at testing the speed of your broadband limit, but lately it isn't being as accurate as it used to be, or at least thats what I think.

I have 20Mb broadband but when I use speedtest.net it only gives me a download speed of 14.5Mb, but if I download a file and see at the end of the download what the speed was it usually give me a result of about 16.5Mb.

Is the speedtest.net wrong or is the information given at the end of a download wrong?

A:What is the best broadband speed checker?

It depends on lots of factors such where the file is coming from and the speed of the host, IMO speedtest.net is the best all round site, but I get poor results from the speedtest UK servers and only get near full speed from their Roubaix (France?) server.

I am paying for a 1 something or other mb, maybe? I can never remember. My question is when I download, at the most I am getting 200k. Is that as good as it can get or is there something I need to do?I am using XP home edition version 2002 Sp2, My network adapter.. NVIDIA nForce. What else afects your actual speed?

April

A:How Do You Increase Broadband Speed?

I verywell could be. The download speed is determined by several factors. The most restrictive is how much bandwidth will the remote server let you have to download the software. I have 6Mbps download speed. MajorGeeks and Download.com seldom allow me more than 250Kbps and it is not uncommon to be as low as 150Kbps. With that said I have downloaded from Source.Forge.com at over 2.5Mbps on occassion. Have you tried testing your download speed? Try testing your speed at the following link.http://performance.toast.net/

For the past 8 weeks ive had an irritating problem that concerns the internet speeds and the effect it has on my pc.

Each time i connect to the net (512k) it runs ok for a few minutes then the speeds start to slow down. Using online speed tests it showed speeds dropping from 512k to 0.1kpbs.

After 15 minutes of internet use the whole pc would start to slow down. Sounds and music would stammer at this point. Playing online or playing with the internet connected would result in framerates dropping from 150fps to as low as 10 - 15 fps.

The mouse cursor across the screen would also stutter when moving the cursor around the screen.

If i disconnected from the internet everything would return to normal. Only if i logged back on to the internet would everything slow down again.

One example of this was when i tried to download 1mb. It took me over 30 minutes to get it downloaded (356 bytes per sec was last known download speed as opposed to the normal 50 - 60 kbps that im used to).

Internet pages would take as long as 10 minutes to load, normally appearing blank.

Many of us (me included) are concerned about how "fast" our ISP (Internet Service Provider) is. Here are five different speed test sites in the US to help you answer that question. To get an accurate assesment of yours run tests several times at different times of the day and on different days.If your ISP sold you a package with a download speed of, say, 25Mbs and your result is only 14Mbs, that's normal. ISP's advertise the maximum speed their network is capable of during a very light load. More users online and the speed drops far off the adveritsed rate.In my experience with a wired router the available speed is divided by the number of connections to it which are active, I have no wireless so have no experience with that.

Tip
For best results clear your browser cache, cookies, temp files, etc. before a test.The farther you are from the test server, the lower your results.

Speedtest.net This one has a map and lets you choose worldwide servers to test with.

Wide Open West

Audit My PC

c|NET Cnet may go wordwide I don't know, it has options to check where you are, work, home, etc. and I got widely varying results with each.

SpeakEasy This is what my ISP (Comcast) uses when they are here for a service call, I thought it was because it always gave the best result, but not true after I checked on the other sites.

Note
This is an international forum, please add your own test sites for your area of the worl... Read more

A:Broadband Speed Tests

browser speed tests arent that clear though. as "your only as fast as your slowest man"

hi there, i thought i would spread the good news, you can get broadband speed out of your existing dialup connection and even increase your broadband connection. It works, check it out at www.whizzconnect.com.

speedtest.net - I have pinged about 10 servers tonight, half in France and half in Ireland & UK. Every French server is pathetically slow in download and pings (28ms) and uploads are in the region of 4-5 everywhere, I am supposed to be on 11. Best was Virgin Media Croydon with 125MB (I am on 120MB at present) and 12ms ping (I used to get 7ms) with slow upload again!

A:Broadband Speed Tests

I really would not put too much weight against what speed test results show. If you want to check what your Upstream & Downstream are. Run Shaper Probe.

Hey guys, I'm new to the forum, was looking here a few days ago - my broadband connection became really slow for no apparent reason and I wanted to test my speed - I was told about this new one on one of the forums called Streetstats, which not only gives you your broadband speed but also tells you what speeds your neighbours are getting - genius!

It really worked for me (found out I could be getting a much better deal with a different provider, so I'm now switching!) - would be interesting to see if it's just a one off or if it really is the most accurate speedtest around...

A:Broadband speed test

You can find them with a Gurgle search... I would download three to try... Youmay be very surprised to see the variance in results.

I'm pretty sure it wont but , we are due to get fiber optic soon and the speeds will be 100 meg and is said to increase later in the year to 300megthe question is will a high speed broadband improve the homegroup speeds for sharing files between desktop and laptop ,

A:will higher speed broadband help...

Julian,Sadly no, that will be limited to the mechanicals directly between their processes. But the good news is it won't slow them down !

I am not sure if this is the right forum, but I have a problem. I have a broadband connection, which is running about 2800 download on the computer the modem is hooked to. I use my laptop to work from, have to connect through a VPN to access our clients servers. On my wireless laptop, I am getting 980 download speed. Both have Windows XP and I don't have them networked. The desktop is hooked via cable to the modem, the laptop and three other desktops are using a wireless connection.

Would going through VPN slow me down that much? Unfortunately, our client uses some resource hungry program and my productivity is going down hill. Would it help if I used a cable for the laptop and hooked it to my router? I didn't know if utilitzing the wireless card made me lose speed.

I'm running a Linksys BEFSR41 wired router, my issue is that I lose about half my download speed when connected to this router. When I connect directly to the cable modem I run at about 20mb. I just got off the phone with Linksys Tech support and they said they would help me out if I gave them $40.I figured I would come here and submit my question and maybe someone out there could help me out.Tech support also said they would be able to fix it, so I'm thinking that maybe its just something simple I'm overlooking.Thanks to anyone that can give me any ideas.

When running online speed check on 3 different website, the PC upstairs shows around 10MB of speed, however, on laptop it only shows around 2MB.

Laptop shows signal strength of wireless router as "very good" (understandably, upstairs it show "excellent" due to its close proximity to router). However, when I'm next to router i.e. when signal strength shows "excellent" and when I run a search, the test shows the speed of around 5-6MB.

I've disabled ZoneAlarm firewall, Spybot anti-spyware and AVG's anti-virus software, when running this speed test, but it's made no difference whatsoever & remains just under 1MB.

I've also ensured that the channels set on router and my wireless chip on laptop is same. Router's default setting's channel 6 and I've ensured the same set for my wireless chip on on laptop as well.

I've had new modem & router sent out by the Virgin people due to this, but the problem continuous, I'm afraid. Can anyone tell why I fail to get around or just under 10MB of broadband speed on my laptop?

I think you'll find that some wireless cards just don't yield the maximum throughput. I've run speed checks on my connection here, 15mbit/15mbit fiber, and my Toshiba running XP-Pro gets 15mbit, but the HP running Vista-32 only manages around 9mbit. Never been able to squeeze any more speed from the HP on the speed test.

My broadband speed comes through my telephone line. I`ve been on 3mb download speed but recently have upgraded to receive up to 7.6mb download speed.My query is this: i`ve been told by a tech guy from my broadband provider that because my router speed yesterday was 4416 that that is the fastest speed i can receive.(i`ts only 3712 today). Can i change my router for a different one that will take 7.6mb speed or does the router actually make any difference to the download speed received?

i would like to test my internet speed in mbps,last week i test my internet speed here http://www.ip-details.com/internet-speed-test/ , it shown in kbps i need the right website to test in mbps,please let me know if there is anything.

The area I live in has a very slow 'best possible' broadband speed, around 2 Megs however I have never got any more than 800 Kb/p/sec. What makes it worse is the longer I use the internet the slower it gets. If I turn off the router and wait a couple of minutes and turn it back on when it reconnects to Pipex it's back to 700/800 Kb.

The router is one of Pipex's Thomson speedtouch ST585 ones but I also had the same problem with my last ISP when I was using a Netgear wireless router. This is what makes me think it's something in my computer set up.

I just re-installed Windows XP home, and I put in all the new patches; SP2, and the like. Before I installed Norton AV, and Zone Alarm, I noticed that my test scores from Broadbandreports.com were hovering around the 5300kpbs-7000kbps.. I have a 7meg download cable modem hook up. So, now that I am up and running to how I should be, I check my test scores are now back down to what I was getting BEFORE I reinstalled windows of around 2500-2600kbps, tested on different servers, different times of the day. What is making it so slow? What program did I install is making my connection so slow?!? I tried disabling NAV, and ZoneAlarm independently, and then together, but I'm still getting the slow speeds. Could it be some other program running somewhere that I dont know of (Or one I think is 'harmless?')

I have a XP 1600+ AMD, 512 PC3200 RAM400FSBWindows XP home SP2X-posted in Hardware

A:Loss of Broadband speed!?!? How?

Don't forget to factor in the 'contention'. Any chance that you have a near neighbour hogging any bandwidth. Happened to me.

Ok:Some questions.What was the speed prior to "nosedive ?Make and model of modem and router?What speed are you paying for ?If your download speed is 87 kbps,that is truly pathetic.How did you determine this ?Are you supposed to have both a lan connection(Ethernet cable connected to the router) and a wireless connection ?If just wireless,may we see:Wifi test exe. Hint from Johnwill

Download and run Xirrus Wi-Fi Inspecto fromwww.xirrus.com/library/wifitools.phpon the problem machine. Post a screen shot of the main screen(networks screen) here.

To post a screen shot of the active window, hold the Alt key and press the PrtScn key. Open the Windows PAINT application and Paste the screen shot. You can then use PAINT to trim to suit, and save it as a JPG format file. To upload it to the forum, open the full reply window and use the Manage Attachments button to upload it here.

Note that this application requires NET Framework to run. If you get an error about a missing function, download and install NET Framework.

Full details are here http://library.techguy.org/wiki/TSG_...g_a_Screenshot

Hi, Hello, just joined & not very proficient, but hope I can understand most!
Can anyone help please. I have Pipex Broadband with good speeds running on the desktop pc - via Linkseys Wireless Router. Have bought new Advent 7098Laptop which received the Wireless Router connection but the speed seems to be half that of the desktop, even when the Desktop isnt doing anything to reduce the speed (is only switched on). They are sitting side by side & the signal is excellent. Emails, browsing all Ok, but downloading anything is soooo slowwww. OK the laptop doesnt have the spec of the desktop but still has an Intel Pentium Centrino1.7 (3.4GHZ) processor & 1G Ram.It seems that the desktop is twice as fast as the Laptop - used BT speedtest which came out at 531kbps. The same test on the pc was 942kbps !Anything I can do either with the Router or Laptop to speed things up please or it because I have the desktop switched on? Have configured a permanent IP address on the router and laptop - all running Windows XP SP2. Thanks

A:Slow Broadband Speed Via Laptop

Broadband

so if i am not wrong you have Intel Pro 2200BG wireless LAN, and its should be enough. maybe its your firewall? try to disable , and chek test it again

Hey everyone, I am not a common poster in the network/web side of this forum. I was wondering if there were any well known ways to speed up broadband connections? I am on a BT home hub in a new build house. The wire comes in at the side of the house and then travels down 1 of the pairs of wire in a Cat5E cable through the house to a phone socket. It then goes into my BT home hub. They predicted 7.5Mb in the area that I am but I am only getting 1.9Mb. Is there anything that could be causing the slow down that I could solve my self?